iweb help!

Are you trying to use CNAME to point both your domain names to your iWeb sites? You can only do this once per account. For a second site you need to use url forwarding instead. The CNAME will normally point to the last site you have published.

Tom:

Is there any way to set up CNAME to point to a specific site and not just the last one published?

OT

Cname appears to have been set up with the assumption that it would be used for a personal website and that you would only have one!
It also assumes that, if you have more than one website, they will be on the same domain file and the most important one, with the personal domain name, will be at the top.
I have noticed that somehow you manage to build websites on separate domain files.
Therefore you would have to keep a copy of the index.html file for the site with the personal domain and upload it to Finder/Go/iDisk/My iDisk/Web/Sites after publishing another site built on a separate domain file.
Of course we all know that MobileMe forbids us to use it for commercial or business sites!
I can't think of any good reason why anybody would want to publish their business site to MobileMe - can you?

You can always cancel your MobileMe subscription easily and get a refund.

For business and commercial sites, it is better to purchase a domain name with hosting from a proper hosting company such as Host Excellence or GoDaddy etc. This gives you faster loading times and more services such as FormMail etc.

You can still create your site in iWeb and then upload directly to your server by publishing to a folder and using a program such as Cyberduck to upload.

So you can't point CNAME to a specific site, only to the last one published site (if different domain files are used for each site) or the top site if all sites are in one domain file. 😟

Is that the same with other hosting servers like Host Excellence?

They don't forbid but it is against the Terms of Use. Primarily because if there are problems with service they don't want to be held accountable for lost revenue, etc. I've not heard of any sites getting pulled before.

With URL forwarding you provide the URL to the site you want to forward to. With a MobileMe account that would be: http://web.me.com/YourMMe_Account_Name/SiteName/.

If you add domain name masking the every page would show your domain name in the URL window at the top. HOWEVER, the downside to that is visitors can only bookmark the first page of your site. That may or may not pose a problem for you. My tutorial site, http://toadstutorials.info, is set up that way.

I have my domain names thru GoDaddy.com and the following is how I setup the forwarding and masking with them. Your host will have a similar section for your account to do the same:

Click to view full size

If your site and the income from it critical I would consider finding a hosting service and moving the site to it. You can keep the MMe site until you get the other one up, running and debugged. Then just change the forwarding address of the domain name.

MobileMe is a total pain to use if you want to have more than one website with a personal domain name and get search engine attention.

I have just answered a question about creating, uploading and verifying a sitemap to the Apple server using Rage Sitemap Automator. As I only use MobileMe for testing I had never done this before. What a pain!

If you want to be found in search engines you have to publish to a local folder and add tags. If you want your website to download in Internet Explorer you really need to optimize your files before upload.

http://www.iwebformusicians.com/SearchEngines/SEO.html

http://www.iwebformusicians.com/WebMusic/iWebandInternetExplorer.html

I publish to Host Excellence and, apart from form mail, I get good tech support, excellent stats through either Webalizer or Modlogon, stat counter, auto responder, bulk email, online store and lots more.

I register my domain names with my hosting company so that they are all auto renewed and I can set up a new site in my control panel and "hook up" the domain name very quickly without jumping through hoops.

One of the main advantages of HE is that it lets you name your root folder the same as the one published by iWeb so that, when you upload the files only to this, you don't get the double barreled URL that a lot of people complain about.

I'm not saying you can't. I guess anything is possible!
I'm just trying to guess what Apple had in mind when they added this feature.

When I publish a new site to HE, I first register the domain name with them. When they let me know its done, I add a new site in my control panel, name it the same as the one in iWeb and a folder of that name is created.

I upload the files from my local folder containing the optimized files with added tags with my FTP application. I enter the URL into my browser and up pops the site. The domain name is automatically linked to the index.html file inside the root folder as though by magic without any help (or screwing up) from me.

Updates are done using Web Site Maestro and its important to reapply your tags with SEO Tool before optimizing. I think this takes 4 or 5 mouse clicks and is very exhausting!

After the site is up and running I can then set up form mail, forwards, counter, stats and upload my folders of media files and their assets.

If you are short of bedtime reading material you can have a look here....

http://www.hostexcellence.com/index.php/v2/pages.manual

I think you should consider creating a signed copy of you Old Toad logo and market it in China.
If you use HE and sign up for Allpay, I would imagine that the 150 million Chinese subscribers will be willing to pay lots of Yuan for such a desirable item....

http://blog.hostexcellence.com/

What URL did you use for the dowdleflowsers domain name forwarding?

Hello brittanylee,

As Roddy and Old Toad already pointed out :
you can not have 2 personal domain names point to 1 MobileMe account when you use C-NAME linking.

Why ? C-NAME is used to link a personal domain name to only one of many websites that resides on 1 server (the server has 1 private IP number). Ex. the MobileMe users website server that hosts millions of user websites. Each user website is identified by 1 unique account name (c-name record).
C-NAME links your personal domain name to that 1 unique account name on a server that hold many (user) websites. Large (Big, mega) companies use C-NAME.

So, if you want to have 2 (or more) personal domain names each to point to a specific (web)Site using C-NAME, you'll need a MobileMe family account.

URL forwarding: it will forward to whatever URL you want. But only once. If a link on the page you got forwarded to has an absolute link to an other page... you'll see that URL (as opposed to relative links).

About cloaking or masking : you only want to use this to set up a website based kiosk in the entry hall of your company or a web commercial.

Kind regards,
Leo

MobileMe is for individual users and families. It works great ! No other company offers this service at this price.

You've made clear that you want to use this user friendly service for business even when it is not intended for that.

I guess, (yes, it's a guess) Apple tolerates your website until it generates so much traffic that it compromises others and then you'll be ... I don't know.

Kind regards,
Leo

Please post the full MobileME URL to each of your sites, i.e. http://web.me.com/MMeAccountName/Site Name/.

pearpeonies@me.com (dowdleflowers.com).

That's an email address. Not sure what you're referring to.

Message was edited by: Old Toad